Ben Wheatley film. Opens with some of that low key British Film thing where people are having regular domestic times with an undercurrent of Something Bad. The hitman and his mate get a contract to kill three people in what seems a fairly routine task for them. And, lo, it starts to go wrong and things unravel. Wicker Man vibes increase, along with the gore.

I found myself thinking through much of the last third that events were a bit ludicrous, but then several hours later working backwards from the conclusion realising how they're all kinda plausible actually if you accept the setup. And even that, as ridiculous as it kind of appears on the face of it, when you read of that Nxivm group and things well maybe it's not even so hugely farfetched after all!

I enjoyed it well enough, though I thought A Field in England was much better.

Yeah I enjoyed that one as well. Nicely done on what must've been a pittance of a budget.

Indeed. Great cast too.

Got his Sightseers from the lieberry. Anyone seen it? Any good?

Well, it's f00king weird. Not quite as out there as A Field in England, but OTOH it hasn't got that disarmingly historic angle going for it. (still got ~15-20 minutes left to go)

I'm intrigued to see how history regards A Field in England when the dust has settled. It clearly admits to a tiny budget. I'm still on the side of calling it great -or at least, bloody good - but there's a (possibly mean-spirited) bit of me thinking that one of the virtues of microbudget masterpieces is that they find ways of circumventing budget limitations so that it becomes unnoticeable. Bogdanovich's still stunningly watchable Targets is maybe the exemplar.

Now I'm fretting: have I just admitted to some artistic equivalent of the so-British imprecation to 'live within your means'.

The best known way is to arrange to have an outstanding director and great actors who don't cost a fortune to employ.
 

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things clearly had a microbudget, and they did SFA to circumvent it. Even so, I consider it some kind of masterpiece, though I doubt many would agree with me (perhaps I should say masterpieces, as a totality it was more of an interesting failure). I think it worked, because the plot was about a deranged wannabe film director and his little troupe of wannabe film stars, whose dabbling in necromancy goes horribly wrong.

Just looked it up. I'd been confusing it with Who Can Kill a Child? which I wouldn't classify as a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination. I've not seen it - I'll give it a look.

And a couple of reels of rushes from an unfinished Karloff movie...

And string. Lots of string and Gaffer tape. 

Make no mistake, the first half is in the 'so bad it's good' genre, then quite unexpectedly turns believable (beer goggles recommended).

And guns.